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The Times, London, 25 March 2004, reported that Abu Qatada, an Al-Qaeda cleric, is an MI5 agent.

Among the scores of young militants who came to visit him in London was the chief suspect in the Madrid train bombings.

His followers also included Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.

A ruling by the Special Immigrations Appeals Commission revealed that there was evidence to show that Abu Qatada “has been concerned in the instigation of acts of international terrorism”.

MI5 agents held meetings with the cleric.

He disappeared from his family home in West London just before the UK's terror law came into force.

Indignant French officials accused MI5 of helping the cleric to abscond. While he remained on the run, one intelligence chief in Paris was quoted as saying: “British intelligence is saying they have no idea where he is, but we know where he is and, if we know, I’m quite sure they do.”Almost a year later Abu Qatada was found hiding in a flat not far from Scotland Yard.

Mr Justice Collins ruled that the cleric was “at the centre in the UK of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda”.

He is a Jordanian national who arrived here with a forged United Arab Emirates passport in September 1993 claiming asylum.

Jordan told Britain that he had been convicted for terrorist attacks in Amman seven months before September 11.

Spanish investigators produced evidence that a militant they had in custody in Madrid — Abu Dahdah — had visited the cleric more than 25 times, bringing him money and new recruits.

~

Bisher al-Rawi is a British resident being held at Guantanamo.

In the letter, seen by The Independent on Sunday, Mr al-Rawi alleges that:

* He was recruited by MI5 weeks after 11 September and was in contact with Abu Qatada.

* MI5 always knew where Abu Qatada was hiding after he fled his home in west London hours before new powers to detain suspects without charge came into force in December 2001. He lived at Elephant & Castle, close to MI5's headquarters, for nine months before being arrested.

* Throughout this time, Mr al-Rawi had 'numerous' meetings with three MI5 agents - 'Alex', 'Matthew' and 'Martin' - in hotels and bars in London, passingmessages between them and Abu Qatada.

* After Mr al-Rawi expressed anxieties his safety was at risk from his contacts with MI5, a service lawyer "assured" him that it would "aid him in his defence [and] would appear as witnesses on his behalf".

On 29 September 2005, Blair's Labour party won the Glasgow Cathcart seat (Edinburgh parliament) with a majority of 2405 over the SNP, ensuring the Labour-Liberal Democrat majority at Holyrood remains at five.

The victory was despite Labour's embarrassment at its former MSP, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, being jailed for 16 months last week for fire-raising at an Edinburgh hotel.

In Livingston, Labour had a majority of 2680 over the SNP, down from 13,097.

The SNP made substantial progress in the West Lothian seat, registering a 10.2% swing.

Turnout in Glasgow Cathcart fell below 32%, meaning Labour won with only one in eight of the electorate.

In Livingston, turnout was 38.6%, down from 47% in 2003.

~~

THE GOOD NEWS:

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP deputy leader, said the Livingston swing would win 28 seats for the SNP if the same pattern were followed nationally.

The Scots (except for Labour voters in places like Cathcart and Livingston) are a clever people.

Scotland provided most of the thinking that has made our modern world. Think of people like James Clerk Maxwell, David Hume, Adam Smith, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) and James Watt.

The people of Cathcart and Livingston may yet sober up and start using their brains.

"Operations at Sellafield and other major nuclear plants such as Sizewell and Dungeness are to be sold off to the private sector for more than £10bn under plans drawn up yesterday by the board of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL).

"American companies such as Halliburton and Fluor are seen as likely contenders in any race to take over British Nuclear Group, which is the main operating arm of the government-owned BNFL, handling nuclear generation, reprocessing and clean-up businesses."

BNG runs a dozen atomic sites, some with relatively new reactors such as Sizewell B in Suffolk.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

The Christian Science Monitor, 28 September 2005, reports that Spain's 9/11 trial has been called 'a failure'

El Mundo headlined its editorial: "the accused... their role in September 11 was pure fantasy."

The daily La Razon wrote: "The first major trial against Islamic terrorism in our country has finished with a certain sense of failure in not being able to prove a direct link between the accused and the September 11 attacks."

EiTB24.com, a Basque news website, reports that defense lawyers and representatives from the Arab Commission for Human Rights "described the case as a sham because of the lack of evidence."

The Times of London reports that Mr. Yarkas helped put together a meeting in northern Spain in July of 2001 where the 9/11 attacks may have been planned. The court ruled that "prosecutors had not proved that Yarkas took part in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center."

The Times of London noted, the Spanish media feel that the prosecution failed to prove any substantial link to 9/11.

[El Mundo] said one problem was that the court’s argument regarding Yarkas’ role in September 11 rested on 'two weak pieces of circumstantial evidence.'

1. His number was found in the phonebook of a person who had lived with Mohammed Atta, the plot leader.

2. Yarkas allegedly made a tapped phone conversation in which another person talks of entering 'the aviation business.'

To consider this a reference to September 11 was 'a flight of fantasy for anyone with common sense, and raises immense doubts about the seriousness of the verdict,' El Mundo said.

The Associated Press reported that one of the people convicted was Taysir Alony, an Al Jazeera journalist, who received six years for "collaboration."

"It was a black day in the history of Spanish justice," said Ahmed al-Sheik, Al-Jazeera news editor, adding that the verdict would be appealed. Mr. Alouni, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, had interviewed Osama bin Laden shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. He had pleaded not guilty and denied ever belonging to Al Qaeda.The Times of London reports that Alouni's wife, Fatima Zahra, told Spanish media after the verdicts: "My husband has been sent down for telling the truth... for doing his job. And he would do the same again."

Reuters reports that Al Jazeera actually never showed the interview with bin Laden that led to Alouni's conviction – it was the US network CNN that subsequently screened it.

The Peninsula of Qatar reports that the leading media watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders, said the conviction of Alouni would "set off alarm bells" for journalists. Jean-François Julliard of RWB said: “It sets a dangerous precedent, particularly for anyone who seeks to interview Bin Laden in the future.”

According to new research, Britain bears “significant responsibility” since 1945 for the direct or indirect deaths of 8.6 million to 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain.

The UK government will lock away for five years anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" a terrorist act committed in the past 20 years.

Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, lists some possible terrorist acts, some going back more than 20 years:

1. Bomber Harris's flattening of German cities in the second world war was specifically described by Churchill as "simply for the sake of increasing terror".

2. The bombing of Hiroshima was a politically motivated assault on people and property.

3. Operation Shock and Awe against Baghdad in March 2003, in which Britain participated, was intended to terrify the civilian population.

Other terrorist acts not mentioned by Jenkins:

4. Operation Gladio involved the setting off of bombs. Run by NATO and Washington, right-wing militias reportedly carried out acts of terrorism and electoral subversion in states such as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and West Germany.

Guardian 24 6 2000: "A 300-page report (to the Italian parliament) says that the United States was responsible for inspiring a "strategy of tension" in which indiscriminate bombing of the public and the threat of a rightwing coup were used to stabilise centre-right political control of the country."

General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of SID, the Italian military counter-intelligence service, revealed to a Milan court in March 2001 that US intelligence services had instigated and abetted rightwing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s.

US support to the Mujahideen initiated during the Carter administration led to the pumping of "billions of dollars into the Afghan cause and thousands of Islamic zealots were given specialist training in the US and Britain."

8. Britain was the first country in the world to bomb innocent people from the air.

The British used beatings, sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, and bombarding with white noise.

32 Whites were killed by the Mau Mau during the five-year state of emergency. More whites died in traffic accidents in the capital city, Nairobi.

Kenyans were forced into concentration camps and routinely tortured.

Some 150,000 Africans died as a direct result of the British policy.

There was a "constant stream of reports of brutalities by police, military and home guards", wrote Canon Bewes, a British missionary.

"Some of the people had been using castration instruments and two men had died under castration."

Other brutalities included slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging people to death, pouring paraffin over suspects and setting them alight and burning eardrums with cigarettes.

A British district officer admitted, "There was outright abuse of power and some of the crimes committed were horrific. One day six Mau Mau suspects were brought into a police station in the neighbouring district to mine. The British police inspector in charge lined them up against a wall and shot them."

A mobile gallows travelled the country. Over 1,000 were hanged, their bodies displayed at crossroads and market places.

MALAYSIA

The British used terror in Malaya.

This involved aerial bombing, massacres of villagers, dictatorial police measures and the "resettlement" of hundreds of thousands of people.

CYPRUS

During the state of emergency, from 1952 to 1957, the British army used torture.

Cypriot Nicos Koshies:

"They took me to the Special Branch and they started beating me. They took off all my clothes, they tied my hands and feet. They asked somebody to come in. He was taking a stick to put up my bottom, he was putting cloths in water and putting them on my face so I could not breathe, he threw me down and danced on my stomach when he was wearing boots. After 12 days I could not recognise myself."

James Callaghan in the House of Commons:

"On 29 June 1957 an inquest was held into the death of Nicos Georghiou. Dr Clearkin said in evidence that bruises in the head were sufficiently severe to have caused the injuries to the brain, perhaps bumping the head against a hard object."

IRAN

In 1953 a coup organised by the British and the USA overthrew Mossadeq and gave power to the Shah.

British SAS forces trained the Shah's Savak secret police.

SAS officers helped train the Iranian army in special operations against the Kurds.

The Shah's regime used torture until it was overthrown in 1979.

ADEN/SOUTH YEMEN

In Aden, later known as South Yemen, SAS squads used terror against local villages.

An official investigation found that from 1964 to 1967 detainees at a British interrogation centre were routinely tortured.

Their eardrums were burst. Others were forced to lean against walls with their fingertips for day and subjected to white noise for hours.

BAHRAIN

Former detainees in Bahrain have described being beaten, electrocuted, whipped, tied in excruciating positions for days on end, kept awake, starved and having their toenails torn out.

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Compton official inquiry acknowledged that the army hooded suspects, fed them on just bread and water and blasted them with noise.

An Amnesty International report said, "It is because we regard the deliberate destruction of a man's ability to control his own mind with revulsion that we reserve a special place in our catalogue of moral crimes for techniques of thought control and brainwashing. Any interrogation procedure which has the purpose or effect of causing a malfunction or breakdown of a man's mental processes constitutes as grave an assault on the inherent dignity of the human person as more traditional techniques of physical torture."

A European human rights report found that British army techniques amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment" causing "at least intense physical and mental suffering".

"George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the bin Laden family." Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001

On 9 11 2001 , 'Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle group was involved in another meeting with representatives of the bin Laden family'.

Terry Macalister, in The Guardian, 28 September 2005, wrote about the UK Ministry of Defence and the Carlyle Group.

Blair is expected to press ahead with the privatisation of QinetiQ, the technology part of the Ministry of Defence...

The chairman of QinetiQ is former General Motors and executive Sir John Chisholm.

Independent industry expert Francis Tusa, editor of the London-based newsletter Defence Analysis, said: "I can't imagine the US, Germany or France selling off the crown jewels like this, can you? There is an awful lot of specialist knowledge and it has come from public money - defence contracts."

QinetiQ was launched in July 2001, headed by Sir John Chisholm as chief executive.

In 2002 US private equity firm Carlyle took a 31% holding in QinetiQ for £42m.

Sir John Chisholm could see his initial investment of £129,000 now worth an astonishing £22m.

Carlyle holds its stake in QinetiQ through various special-purpose vehicles registered in Guernsey.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

According to Ian Paisley, "There were no photographs, no detailed inventory, and no detail on the destruction of these arms. To describe today's statement as transparent would be the falsehood of the century."

Sunday 15 August 1982 - During a visit to the United States of America (USA) Martin Smyth, then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament (MP), alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in Northern Ireland.

Friday 5 November 1982In the United States of America (USA) a court acquitted five men of charges of conspiring to ship arms to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during 1981. The men used the defence that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had approved the shipment of arms.

SUNDAY HERALD, UK: Nelson Mandela is ... named as an MI6 agent who... allowed UK spying operations to be based in South Africa. Allegations of Mandela's recruitment by the British intelligence service ... revealed in a controversial new book, 'MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations,' by the acclaimed intelligence expert Stephen Dorril.

"We'll cut corporation tax because we know from our European competitors, like Ireland and Sweden, that it's the way to grow our nation's wealth...

"Yes, we will be economic patriots - and we will be proud to be so. Economic patriotism means that an SNP government would never have favoured a subsidised Polish shipyard over Ferguson's shipyard on the Clyde - a Scottish yard supporting Scottish jobs.

"The Labour/Liberal government that sold Ferguson's down the river tells us we need to play by the rules. Well, we will play by the rules. But the first rule will be this: we will never let Scottish industries and Scottish jobs be destroyed by those who are bending the rules...

"Delegates, economic patriotism also means that an SNP government would never stand by, saying and doing nothing while our biggest industrial company is targeted for take-over by an overseas competitor.

"Scottish Power pays the wages of 6000 people across this country. It is of enormous strategic importance to Scotland. And we cannot afford to lose it. There are those who say we don't understand the global economy.

"Well, I say, we understand it all too well. We know that across Europe and the world, responsible governments defend their national champions and their national economic interest. And we understand that without major Scottish players on the world stage, Scotland can't take part in and benefit from the global economy.

"So, let me make this pledge loudly and clearly. We will stand up for Scottish Power...

"We will abolish tuition fees - front door, back door, any door - and we will restore grants...

"Delegates, young people will always want to see the world. But we must encourage them to put down roots here in Scotland, to help build our country. And so an SNP government will also introduce first time buyers' grants to give everyone a better chance of making a start with a home of their own...

"An SNP government will help pensioners and families too. We'll get rid, once and for all, of the unfair council tax. The council tax that has gone up by 55 per cent under Labour and which hits hardest those who can least afford to pay it.

"We'll put in its place a local income tax, based on ability to pay. Under our proposals, a majority of pensioners will pay nothing and most people will pay less than they do now...

"I can announce today that an SNP government will introduce a Patients' Rights Act. It will give every patient the statutory right to an individual waiting time guarantee, based on their own needs. And it will give them a right of redress if it is not met...

"We will build capacity in our health service. But we will also introduce a new funding system for hospitals that will increase efficiency and ensure that more patients are treated faster.

"But delegates, there will be even more clear water between Labour and the SNP on health. An SNP government will not privatise the health service. Not now. Not ever.

"We will not use taxpayers' money, like Labour, to help the private sector undermine the NHS...

"Everyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. But it wrong that every year more than 4000 people charged with a serious crime of violence, including murder and sexual assault, are freed on bail, too often to offend again.

"That must stop.

"Look around Europe and the world and you will see many small, confident, successful nations, sure of themselves and of their place in the world. They all have one thing in common. Independence.

"Take Norway. This year Norway celebrates 100 years of independence. It is the second richest country in the world. Voted by the UN for the 5th year in a row the best place on earth to live. It's no co-incidence that Norway is so successful.

"It is successful because it is independent. Norway has public services to be proud of. The people's wages are a third higher than ours. Norway has an oil fund of £100bn that is being invested in the future of her citizens.

"We could have all that too. We could have had it a generation ago, if successive Tory and Labour governments had not lied about our oil wealth. And, delegates, they did lie. And they kept on lying.

"Do you remember the one about how it wasn't Scotland's oil anyway? Well, let me read to you from the secret document. It says: 'Its hard to see any conclusion other than to allow Scotland to have that part of the continental shelf which would have been hers if she had been independent all along.'

"Put simply, delegates - it WAS Scotland's oil. It IS Scotland's oil. But it is never too late to learn.

"Delegates, our natural resources give us riches that many would envy. The only question we have to answer – we in each generation who inherit this land – is how we use those natural resources for the benefit not just of ourselves, but of those who come after us.

"This generation has that question to answer now. Will we use our oil riches wisely? Will we invest in a better future for our country? Or will we let that great advantage be poured away again?

"I think, deep down, everyone in Scotland knows what the answer to that question must be. For 18 long years, we let the Tories squander our oil wealth paying for unemployment. We are now watching Blair waste it on an illegal war in Iraq.

"Surely, it is time for Scotland to say enough is enough. To proclaim loudly and clearly that it is still Scotland's oil and that we are not prepared to be cheated out of one more drop. Let us send that message from this conference today...

"Our desire to get on, to join in, to be part of the world is greater than ever. And the advantages of getting on, joining in, being part of the world is greater than ever too.

"We know that we can only join in if we choose independence. If we choose, as a nation, a better future. The time is coming round again when that choice can be made. Our task is to persuade everyone who lives here to choose the best future for our country. To persuade them to choose Independence.

"There is no one else to take on that task. It belongs to the Scotland's Party. Now we must do it, for Scotland's sake."

German investigators agree to the CIA's request to recruit businessman Mamoun Darkazanli as an informant. An agent of the LfV, the Hamburg state intelligence agency, casually approaches Darkazanli and asks him whether he is interested in becoming a spy. Darkazanli replies that he is just a businessman who knows nothing about al-Qaeda or terrorism. The Germans inform the local CIA representative that the approach failed. The CIA agent persists, asking the German agent to continue to try. However, when German agents ask for more information to show Darkazanli they know of his terrorist ties, the CIA fails to give them any information.

As it happens, at the end of January 2000, Darkazanli had just met with Barakat Yarkas in Madrid, Spain. (Chicago Tribune, 11/17/02) Darkazanli is a longtime friend and business partner of Yarkas, the most prominent al-Qaeda agent in Spain. (Los Angeles Times, 1/14/03)

The meeting included other suspected al-Qaeda figures, and it was monitored by Spanish police. If the CIA is aware of the Madrid meeting, they do not tell the Germans. (Chicago Tribune, 11/17/02) A second LfV attempt to recruit Darkazanli also fails. The CIA then attempts to work with federal German intelligence officials in Berlin to “turn” Darkazanli. Results of that effort are not known. (Chicago Tribune, 11/17/02)

Mohamed Atta travels to Spain again (his first trip was in January). Three others cross the Atlantic with him but their names are not known, as they apparently use false identities. [El Mundo, 9/30/01] Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a member of his Hamburg terrorist cell, arrives in Spain on July 9, and stays until July 16. [New York Times, 5/1/02] Hijacker Marwan Alshehhi also comes to Spain at about the same time and leaves on July 17. [Associated Press, 6/30/02] Alshehhi must have traveled under another name, because US immigration has no records of his departure or return. [Department of Justice, 5/20/02] Investigators believe Atta, Alshehhi, and bin al-Shibh meet with at least three Unknown others in a secret safe house near Tarragona. [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02; Associated Press, 6/30/02] It is theorized that the final details of the 9/11 attacks are set at this meeting. [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02] Atta probably meets with, and is hosted by, Barakat Yarkas and other Spanish al-Qaeda members. [International Herald Tribune, 11/21/01] One of the unknowns at the meeting could be Yarkas's friend Mamoun Darkazanli, a German with connections to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell. Darkazanli travels to Spain and meets with Yarkas during the time Atta is there. He travels with an unnamed Syrian Spanish suspect, who lived in Afghanistan and had access there to al-Qaeda leaders. [Los Angeles Times, 1/14/03] The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia later reports that Atta also meets with fellow hijackers Waleed Alshehri and Wail Alshehri on July 16. [Associated Press, 9/27/01] Strangely enough, on July 16, Atta stayed in the same hotel in the town of Salou that had hosted FBI counterterrorist expert John O'Neill a few days earlier, when he made a speech to other counterterrorism experts on the need for greater international cooperation by police agencies to combat terrorism. Bin al-Shibh arrived in Salou on July 9, which means he would have been there when the counter-terrorist meeting took place. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp 135]

Spanish police tape a series of cryptic, coded phone calls from a caller in Britain using the codename “Shakur” to Barakat Yarkas (also known as Abu Dahdah), the leader of a Spanish al-Qaeda cell presumably visited by Mohamed Atta in July. A Spanish judge claims that a call by Shakur on this day shows foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Shakur says that he is “giving classes” and that “in our classes, we have entered the field of aviation, and we have even cut the bird's throat.” Another possible translation is, “We are even going to cut the eagle's throat,” which would be a clearer metaphor for the US. [Observer, 11/25/01; Guardian, 2/14/02] Spanish authorities later claim that detective work and voice analysis shows Shakur is Farid Hilali, a young Moroccan who had lived mostly in Britain since 1987. The Spanish later charge him for involvement in the 9/11 plot, claiming that, in the 45 days preceding 9/11, he travels constantly in airplanes “to analyse them and to be prepared for action.” It is claimed that he is training on aircraft in the days leading up to 9/11. He is further said to be connected to the Madrid train bombing in 2003. [Scotsman, 7/15/04; London Times, 7/16/04; London Times, 6/3004] The Spanish Islamic militant cell led by Yarkas is allegedly a hub of financing, recruitment, and support services for al-Qaeda in Europe. Yarkas's phone number is later also found in the address book of Said Bahaji, and he had ties with Mohammed Haydar Zammar and Mamoun Darkanzali. All three are associates of Atta in Hamburg. [Los Angeles Times, 11/23/01] Yarkas also “reportedly met with bin Laden twice and was in close contact with” top deputy Muhammad Atef. [Washington Post, 11/19/01] On November 11, 2001, Yarkas and ten other Spaniards will be arrested and charged with al-Qaeda activity. [International Herald Tribune, 11/21/01]

Darkanzali attended Said Bahaji's wedding in October, 1999. A bearded Marwan al-Shehhi stands at the far left, while Bahaji sits at the far left. Others who attended included Ziad Jarrah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Abdelghani Mzoudi, anThe US freezes the accounts of 27 individuals and organizations, alleging that they had channeled money to al-Qaeda. Included in the list is Mamoun Darkazanli. US officials say Darkazanli took part in a 1996 attack on government troops in Saudi Arabia. According to German investigators, Darkazanli attended Said Bahaji's wedding several years earlier. [New York Times, 9/29/01] The German government also freezes accounts connected to Darkazanli on October 2, 2001. Both governments suspect Darkazanli of providing financial and logistical support to the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell. [Agence France-Presse, 10/28/01] Shortly thereafter, Spanish police listening in to Barakat Yarkas' telephone hear Yarkas warn the leader of a Syrian extremist organization that Darkazanli has caught the “flu” going around. [Chicago Tribune, 11/17/02]

Christopher Berry-Dee, at New Criminologist, 25 September 2005, reports that an FBI agent has threatened a former USDA federal agent, Dr Janette Parker, now a staff reporter for The New Criminologist.

According to New Criminologist:

Haroon Aswat – the man British Police believe was behind the London bombings – was working for MI6; it has been confirmed by leading U.S. and French intelligence asset/agents.

Now an FBI agent in Seattle ...has demanded that former USDA federal agent, Dr Janette Parker, stop talking to the British media about how the FBI obstructed their own top terrorism investigator, John O’Neill in his enquiries.

Dr Parker writes: “The American press can be silenced but not the British press. MI5 and MI6 are not happy about the intelligence failure on the American side of the Atlantic, especially withholding information about Haroon Aswat’s intention for additional bombings and his fund raising in Seattle area in March 2002 (after 911).”

...The FBI can assert that Haroon was not in Seattle on March 6, 2002, but British intelligence had him under close surveillance and they know whether he was in England or not.

... British citizens should be demanding of Prime Minister Blair why SIS/MI6 was using Haroon Aswat as an agent, and why, as John Loftus claims, was Aswat, who was on the British security services ‘Watch List’, allowed to leave the UK, when the British Police were desperately searching for him?

...In a chilling observation, our source, who has been verified as having carried out executions on behalf of H.M. Government, and MI6, and a man who has served 25-years for terrorism offenses, added:

“The Northern Ireland Bank Robbery…the Dublin Art theft…the stealing of millions of pounds of UK Government Bonds – two in the name of Mark Thatcher – has all been covered up…MI6 would order me to commit murder, then the SAS would try and shoot me because I knew too much.”

“International terrorism is VERY BIG business,” our source confirmed. “The U.S. and UK trade in terrorism like it is some kind of off-the-shelf commodity. Forget the destruction of lives to normal people, women and children. I have been there and done it all. Your Dr Parker has done the right thing. Like me she is cladding herself with insurance – like a Kevlar jacket, and I wish her all the best.”...

Sunday, September 25, 2005

ROME, Sept. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Italy's northern city Milan's readiness to deal with terrorism was tested on Friday with the staging of multiple, simulated attacks, Italian media reported on Friday.

The anti-terrorism drill - the biggest ever held in Italy - involved two simultaneous fake train blasts and a simulated attackon an airport bus complete with hostage-taking.

More than 2,000 people took part in the exercises, which brought traffic in the city center to a standstill as police, firemen and medical and emergency staff rushed to the scenes of the attacks.

Shops near the city center were closed and streets cordoned offand cleared of traffic as some 200 police cars and ambulances poured into the area and helicopters circled in the sky above.

The Milan prefecture was in constant contact with the Italian Interior Ministry, which ordered the drills to test the responsiveness and efficiency of emergency services in the event of a real terrorist attack.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, who ordered the drills after the July terrorist attacks in London, said he was "very satisfied" with the way the city handled the simulated attacks...

The minister confirmed that similar anti-terrorism drills would now be held in Rome, Naples and Turin.

Gladio: the idea was for the security services of the West to kill innocent people and then blame this on others.

Gladio was about keeping the right-wing elite in power.

Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

Parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have given us a little of the truth. The book "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser documents some of what we know so far.

Run by NATO and Washington, right-wing militias carried out acts of terrorism and electoral subversion states such as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and West Germany.

85 people were killed on Aug. 2, 1980 in the bombing of the Bologna train station.

According to the Italian Senate, after its investigation in 2000, the bombers were later discovered to be "men inside Italian state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence."

The Independent on Sunday, 25 September 2005, asks: So what were two undercover British soldiers up to in Basra?

The paper reports:

1. an Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for the two 'British' soldiers recently snatched from a police station in Basra.

2. "Judge Mudhafar says he is not convinced the two men are British - possibly because one of them was said to have been carrying a Canadian-made weapon - and they may not be entitled to immunity. This has added yet another layer of mystery to what is already an extremely murky affair...

3. "The picture the British public has been allowed to gain of our occupation of southern Iraq - one of relative tranquillity and co-operation compared to the bloody mayhem further north - is at best misleading, at worst deliberately distorted...

4. "It is not impossible that one or both of the men are not British. Special forces from Australia and New Zealand, for example, often work closely with the SAS. They could even be "civilian contractors" of the kind hired by the CIA, usually ex-special forces.

5. "Subversion from nearby Iran has been blamed for a recent increase in attacks on British forces in southern Iraq... Initial assumptions that the undercover pair were working to combat such influence have been contradicted by military and other sources...

6. "Initial attempts by British military spokesmen to minimise what happened merely heightened confusion and suspicion. Claims that the crowd was small and the violence minor were quickly belied by photographs of a soldier leaping from the turret of his Warrior armoured vehicle, his uniform burning from a petrol bomb. British troops were said to have emerged largely unscathed, only for it to emerge later that one was flown home in a serious condition.Not only did it appear that lethal force had to be used to suppress the riot, causing an unknown number of Iraqi deaths, it was also claimed that the two undercover men had opened fire when they were stopped at a police roadblock, killing at least one policeman. There were also sharply conflicting accounts of why troops crashed into the station: to determine where the pair were, according to one version, or to rescue a negotiating team, according to another. The surveillance team had been handed over to militants and were found at a house in the district, the military said, but Iraqis denied this, saying the building was within the compound."

7. "Conspiracy theories, always rife in Iraq, have been fuelled dramatically by last week's events, according to Mazin Younis of the Iraqi League, an alliance of Iraqi exiles based in Britain. He has close contacts with Basra. 'Everyone you talk to [thinks the two undercover men] were up to something very bad... to kill somebody or destroy a building, and let us battle against each other,' he said."

Saturday, September 24, 2005

General Frank Kitson first thought up the concept that was later used in the formation of Al Qaeda. He called it the ‘pseudo gang’—a state sponsored group used to advance an agenda, while discrediting the real opposition.

Ian Buckley, in an article appearing on the Truth Seeker website, makes mention of General Frank Kitson, a British officer “who first thought up the concept that was later used in the formation of Al Qaeda. He called it the ‘pseudo gang’—a state sponsored group used to advance an agenda, while discrediting the real opposition.

The strategy was used in both Kenya and Northern Ireland. In the case of Northern Ireland, most of the violence that was attributed to ‘Loyalists’ was in actuality not their handiwork, but the result of the activities of the death squads affiliated to the British secret state...

The Rhodesians also used the “pseudo gang” concept to bomb churches (and murder missionaries) and blame the violence on “communist atheists” or Patriotic Front guerrillas fighting for national determination against the racist government.

“The Rhodesians had extensive experience in counter-insurgency doctrine dating back to 1956 when British Commonwealth forces in Malaya had included the Rhodesian African Rifles, and the Rhodesians had also modeled their ‘pseudo gangs’ along the lines of the British counter-insurgency strategy during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising in Kenya,” writes Stan Winer.

In addition, South Africa staged violent “black-on-black” incidents, using “Soviet-made AK-47 rifles and Makarov pistols to create the impression that ANC ‘terrorists’ were responsible, and police reports always blamed the ANC.”

The South African police “diverted taxpayers’ money to a police-run strategic deception unit called Stratcom,” Winer explains. “Jailed security police death-squad commander Colonel Eugene de Kock later admitted in court that his own involvement in Stratcom during the 1980s included clandestine attacks on white people, where were falsely attributed to black people, in order to provoke a right-wing backlash.”

It is precisely this sort of “backlash” the Anglo-American fake terror effort is designed to provoke against Muslims and Arabs, as per the neocon plan to wage a Thirty Years’ War (or longer) against Islamic societies. It should be noted the original Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) had a distinct religious coloration, although the central motive was entirely political—the self-preservation of the Habsburg dynasty.

In much the same way, the “clash of civilizations” crew (the current predominant clique is distinctly of the Straussian-Machiavellian stripe) currently in control of the Anglo-American globalist empire desire to preserve and expand their hold on much of the world (especially the oil and resource rich Middle East and East Asia) and a faux schism or conflict between western and eastern civilization fits the ticket.

General Frank Kitson simply paved the way as an innovator of techniques for the current round of dirty and murderous covert tricks carried out by moles and patsies under the guise of Islamic terrorism. Islam is a near perfect manufactured enemy due to the lingering xenophobic and cultural legacy of the Crusades and the widely held western fear and mistrust of the “Saracen” hordes who want nothing more than to install a world-wide caliphate (Islamic leader), as we are now told incessantly, most recently in the wake of the patsy bombings and non-bombings in London.

Extracts from an article entitled "Embedded Experts in the ‘War on Terror’"

Embedded experts are able to conceal their partisan roles behind the façade and legitimacy of academic status...

They reinforce US neoconservative propaganda about a global ‘Al Qaeda’ organisation, ever ready to carry out military operations...

Embedded experts play a propaganda role... This role can be illustrated by the ‘ricin conspiracy’ case, which started with high-profile arrests in north London in the run-up to the US-UK attack on Iraq, and then continued for two years with mass-media scares about the threat of public poisoning. During the trial the jury heard no evidence of useable ricin, nor credible plans to poison anyone, nor an Al Qaeda link.

The jury was not persuaded of any conspiracy to murder, though one defendant was convicted of plotting to ‘cause disruption, fear and injury’. He had no co-conspirators, except perhaps government Ministers who had encouraged public fears of poison attacks. The most specific evidence against him came from a detainee apparently tortured in Algeria.

Even though the prosecution case collapsed, acquitted defendants were widely portrayed as ‘terror suspects’.

Terrorism ‘expert’ Professor Paul Wilkinson commented:

The police inquiry obviously showed up a much wider network of people who had been plotting to use poison in other parts of Europe. We should take the threat seriously (Evening Standard, 14 April 2005, p.5)

Likewise, after the Home Office withdrew a warning over ‘dirty bombs’, Wilkinson suggested that the warning should be heeded, thereby perpetuating public fear (BBC, 2002).

Such academic terrorism ‘experts’ – or terrorologists – are deeply embedded in the elite power structure. They conveniently blur distinctions between political dissent, resistance to oppressive regimes, and violent threats to populations. These experts advise governments on counter-terrorism, thus sanitising Western state terror as legitimate techniques for self-defence (George, 1991).

Where did these terrorologists come from? How do they gain influence and credibility? How can they be countered?

Counter-insurgency school: ‘total war’

In the 1960s and 1970s the ‘counter-insurgency school’, which dominated academic and policy research on terrorism, aimed at influencing military strategy. Writers such as Richard Clutterbuck and Frank Kitson drew on their extensive experience in counter-insurgency campaigns, which set out to eradicate any resistance to Britain’s declining system of direct rule over its colonies.

Backing up British rule, Clutterbuck and Kitson faced a sustained resistance which took the forms of both political and armed struggle. In response, their writings described a ‘continuum of insurgency’ or ‘spectrum of political conflict’.

With such language, popular protest, industrial action and terrorism were located on various points along a continuum of political violence.

In his book, Low Intensity Operations, Kitson (1971) argued that military forces must recognise that subversion and insurgency were now a part of ‘one total war’. Counter-insurgency theory provided a strategic framework for how a state should respond to insurgency, by treating political resistance as a military problem. According to Clutterbuck: ‘history has shown that terrorism can be and has been eliminated by a ruthless response to it, for power does ultimately lie with the government and its security forces’.

These military theorists played a hands-on role in suppressing anti-colonial insurgency. Militantly anti-Communist, they shared a view that most anti-colonial resistance was funded by the KGB. They conflated labour disputes, popular protest movements and ‘terrorist’ activity. In particular they advocated greater support for special military forces.

According to Kitson and Clutterbuck, infiltration of the local population can be achieved by covert operations, normally conducted by special forces rather than regular military units. At the heart of this was the strategy of ‘turning.’

In the 1950s colonial war in Malaya, ‘turning’ was described as follows:

The method of acquiring and using agents was to spy on the guerrilla’s contacts with the people, identify who those were in touch with them, persuade a number of those to turn traitor, and so disrupt the rest of the organisation so that the guerrillas were fairly sure to go on relying on at least some of those people that would in the end betray them by giving ‘advance precise information’ (Clutterbuck, 1973: 212).

This technique would be used to facilitate the further surrender of enemy personnel and the murders of those who allied themselves with the insurgents. Local populations who did not conform could be manipulated by, for example, cutting off their food supplies until they withdrew support for insurgent groups. Influenced this strategy, British colonial campaigns were notoriously brutal, infringing the Geneva conventions (Curtis, 2003) – as does ‘low-intensity warfare’ today.

St Andrews-RAND nexus: redefining terrorism

Just as journalists who attach themselves to military units are now seen as ‘embedded’ with the military, the counter-insurgency theorists are embedded as experts in universities and think tanks. Today an analogous network connects academics with militarist agendas, especially through the RAND Corporation, which has held numerous contracts to advise the US military.

In 1993 Bruce Hoffman temporarily left RAND to found the Centre for Studies in Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews. Hoffman is currently an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the CSTPV. Brian Jenkins, a Senior Analyst at RAND who founded the corporation’s terrorism research programme in 1972, is currently a member of the CSTPV Advisory Council.

The relationship is further strengthened through the collaborative establishment of the RAND-St Andrews database of ‘international terrorism incidents’.

The RAND-St Andrews nexus skews understandings of ‘terrorism’, especially through its pivotal role in the peer review and publishing of research. Members of the Centre and of RAND hold key editorial positions on the two foremost academic journals in the field: Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. Those journals emphasise political violence directed against states, while largely ignoring violence by states, except those not allied to US or Western European countries – i.e., those described as ‘rogue states’ by the US government (Burnett and Whyte, 2005).

Embedded experts define ‘terrorism’ selectively, with a bias towards US-led alliances and against any resistance. According to Prof. Paul Wilkinson, Director of the CSTPV, extra-judicial assassinations by Israel are ‘ruthless acts of counter-terror’, i.e. self defence (Wilkinson, 2002: 68). Within this perspective the USA, the UK and their client states never carry out ‘terrorism’.In a mid-1990s government inquiry on terrorism, Wilkinson emphasised violence by oppressed groups, while ignoring state violence against them.

In particular he problematised trans-national support for ‘the weak’:

… almost any prolonged and significant terrorist campaign is likely to have an international dimension: almost every terrorist group tends to look across the borders of the state where it is based, and further afield, not only for weapons, funds, training and safe-haven, but for any ideological, political or diplomatic support it can manage to obtain; sub-state terrorism is typically the weapon of the weak (Wilkinson, 1996: 4).

Such diagnoses justified permanent anti-terrorist legislation to target the weak.That report led to the Terrorism Act 2000, which broadened the definition of terrorism. It blurred any distinction between political protest and organised violence, as well as any distinction between ideological and material support. This law redefined terrorism to include simply 'the threat' of 'serious damage to property', in ways 'designed to influence the government' for a 'political cause'.

Moreover, it banned organisations on the basis that their activities abroad fit that broad definition, and criminalised any ‘association’ with such organisations in Britain. After the September 11 attacks, the EU Council redefined terrorism in even broader ways. Predictably, such powers have been used to intimidate (and sometimes prosecute) political opponents of oppressive regimes allied to the UK. These developments ominously bring home to Britain the counter-insurgency theory that was deployed in its colonies, and in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, to counter political revolt.

An associate of the CSTPV, Rohan Gunaratna (2003), has offered expert testimony in UK prosecutions for supposed membership in ‘terrorist’ groups. In the court case of Meziane, several refugees in Leicester were accused of fund-raising for terrorist activities abroad. After Gunaratna claimed that they were Al Qaeda members, he was challenged by the defence to provide documentation, but he did not. Consequently, the allegations were dropped and he was not recalled as a witness. Neither did the prosecution take up his similar offer in another case against refugees for alleged membership of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Nevertheless Gunaratna is still quoted as an expert by journalists.

Embedded in the Iraq occupation

Beyond its academic roles, the RAND-St Andrews nexus has close professional links with key political and corporate players in the ‘war against terror’. An important example is Bruce Hoffman, founder member of the CSTPV and currently RAND Corporation’s key expert on terrorism.

In 2004 he was appointed as senior advisor on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency to the Constitutional Provisional Authority in Iraq. Hoffman argued that the occupation strategy can be successful only if it adopts a British colonial model of counter-insurgency, comparable to perspectives in Kitson’s Low Intensity Operations.

The CSTPV also has institutional ties to the private military industry. One example involves founder member of the CSTPV and current Honorary Senior Research Fellow, David Claridge. In 2001 Claridge established Janusian Security Risk Management Limited, a private military intelligence and security company, as a subsidiary of the political risk firm The Risk Advisory Group.

The company claimed to be the first Western security firm with an independent operational office and a country manager permanently based in Iraq. In the press statement accompanying its launch, Janusian acknowledges their link with the CSTPV in this collaboration, which ‘includes shared access to research, intelligence sources and databases, and the expertise of the Centre’s staff, as well as the development of sector-specific studies into areas of political risk’.

Like their antecedents in counter-insurgency theory, present-day embedded experts emphasise techniques for total war against both political and military resistance. Hoffman blames the USA’s inadequate planning for the ‘insurgency’ problem in Iraq. According to him, ‘a critical window of opportunity was lost because we failed to anticipate the widespread civil disorder and looting that followed the capture of Baghdad’; this key mistake ‘breathed life into the insurgency.’ In his analysis, the insurgency originated independently of the invasion; it has no link with the occupiers’ activities there.

Conclusion: the threat of terrorology

Terrorology is the theoretical arm of counter-insurgency, both at home and abroad. Counter-insurgency theory provides a basis for homogenising all resistance, protest and dissent as ‘terror’ threats. Subversion is understood as all tactics that attempt to force governments to take a particular course of action (or to refrain from some action). Such a broad definition could include political and economic pressure, strikes, protest marches and counter-hegemonic propaganda.

Moreover, by locating ‘terrorist threats’ within entire communities, today’s counter-insurgency theory legitimises a low-intensity total war at home and abroad. Strategies for ‘containing’ terrorist threats involve counter-insurgency methods against entire populations, which then conveniently become targets for state persecution in their own right. Its ‘anti-terror’ weapons include bans on organisations, exemplary prosecutions, stop-and-search powers, freezing the bank accounts of Muslim charities, blackmail against refugees to act as police informers, etc. (CAMPACC, 2003).

Terrorology has become a political basis for anti- democratic agendas built into ‘anti-terror’ laws. In response, we can systematically challenge terrorology – its neutral façade and claim to independence. Still better, critical voices should be heard in their own right as terrorism experts, emphasising the role of multinational companies and occupation forces (e.g. in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, etc.) as obstacles to a peaceful world. In countering the partisan expertise of terrorology, we all have a role to play – political activists, academics, lawyers, journalists and many others – especially by supporting each other and working together.

Malcolm Moore, in the Telegraph (London) on 24 September 2005, explains that 'the debt-relief train is heading towards the sidings.'According to Gordon Brown, the deal to cancel $40billion (£22½billion) of debt owed by the world's poorest countries is "on a knife-edge".

The Telegraph explains that the debt relief process 'has been mired in bureaucracy and no start date has been set...

'Now there is a real chance that debt relief will be shunted to one side for at least another six months, as countries bicker over who will eventually pay for the deal.

'No finance ministers wish to see the payments for debt relief appear on their budgets, and a proposal to pay with the proceeds of selling some of the IMF's gold stocks is now dead in the water...

'A small group of countries, led by Belgium and the Netherlands, but also including Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Iran, is worried whether the countries in the G8 club of wealthy nations will actually cough up the money they promised at the Gleneagles summit in July.

'Germany in particular, which was never hugely enthusiastic about the proposal, is more likely to renege on the deal in the aftermath of its election, since it is unclear whether it can even form a government.

'In the United States, the support of the Christian right has convinced politicians that debt relief is a good deal, but the issues thrown up by Hurricane Katrina have delayed a bill that promised payment on its path through Congress...

(Paul Wolfowitz is the head of the World Bank)

'The staff of the World Bank, which is owed the majority of the debt, is extremely concerned because forgiving the debt will wipe out a large proportion of the Bank's income. This will dramatically weaken the Bank's finances, and its ability to make loans, unless the G8 countries pay the equivalent sum into its vaults. Leaked memos show staff believe the form of the deal struck at Gleneagles is insufficient to protect the Bank, and Mr Wolfowitz, in a tone that was as conciliatory as possible, has insisted the Bank must remain viable...

'Behind the scenes, Treasury staff, and the Department for International Development are extremely worried, according to one NGO worker. If Brown fails, and the deal is sidelined, there would be enough time for more conditions to be attached, and perhaps for the form of the deal to be fundamentally changed. One proposal is that debt relief would be phased, and applied as regularly as money could be found to fund it.

'"The fear is that instead of total debt cancellation, there could be year-on-year debt relief, which would see countries such as Niger reapplying every year to have their debt written off," said one NGO worker.

'Niger, according to Max Lawson, at Oxfam, still pays $1m a week in debt repayments.'

"There have been no official statements from the Bank or IMF to confirm that the debt cancellation is going to come about. U.S. Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto added to the tension by stating on Sep. 13 that the G8 deal may be in 'jeopardy'.

Philip Sherwell, in the (London) Telegraph 19 September 2005, explained that the G-8 debt deal is facing resistance.

According to the Telegraph:

"The much-vaunted British initiative to wipe out the debts of the world's poorest countries, approved by the Group of Eight club of wealthy nations in Scotland in July, has come under threat ahead of next weekend's World Bank annual meeting...

"Tony Fratto, a senior U.S. Treasury official, said: 'It's not a done deal by any means. There are people who want this rewritten.'

"The plan to cancel all debts owed by the 18 poorest - mostly African - nations to international lenders such as the World Bank was heralded as a breakthrough for the British G-8 presidency at the Gleneagles summit, held in Perthshire, Scotland...

"An internal World Bank briefing paper has concluded that its International Development Association (IDA) will be hampered in making loans to low-income countries if the debts are written off, as the bank itself would no longer receive interest payments. In a second attack on the deal, the Netherlands and Belgium, apparently frustrated that they were not consulted over the G-8 deal, have questioned some of the conditions of the debt write-off...

"One American delegate said last week that he thought the prospects for success at the Washington meeting were "not much better than 50-50."

"Bob Geldof, the former rock star who organized the Live 8 concerts to put pressure on G-8 leaders, signaled his own fears at a press conference at the United Nations, alongside Mr. Blair. 'The great leap forward [at Gleneagles] must be implemented at the coming meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund,' he said. 'If it is not implemented, we are looking at a disaster."'

Andrew Buncombe, in The Independent (UK) 24 September 2005, reports that the chilling testimony of an American soldier has fueled anti-war demonstrations in Washington and London.

Hart Viges has told how indiscriminate fire from US troops is likely to have killed an untold number of Iraqi civilians.

"I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds," Mr Viges said at American University in Washington.

Viges spoke of an order to open fire on all taxis in the city of Samawa.

A report published last year in The Lancet suggested that up to 100,000 Iraqis may have lost their lives.

The Independent points out that US Polls suggest that 60 per cent now believe the war was wrong.

A majority in the UK also oppose the Iraq war.

According to The Independent:

"Not since August 1968, the high point of the opposition to the war in Vietnam, has there been a majority of people in America who believe that an ongoing conflict was wrong.

"That historic turning point in public opinion came seven months after North Vietnamese forces launched the devastating Tet Offensive, as the divided Democratic Party Convention in Chicago was choosing Hubert Humphrey rather than Eugene McCarthy as its presidential candidate and 10,000 anti-war protesters fought pitched battles with police in the streets."

Friday, September 23, 2005

On 23 September 2005, Alex Salmond MP, leader of the Scottish National Party, spoke about Iraq and about Scotland's oil.

Alex Salmond said:

Every member of the Government, Blair , Brown and the rest, every Member of Parliament who voted us into this sequence of disasters should hang their heads in shame.

Bush and Blair should now be on their knees to the United Nations asking for a security force to be drawn from Islamic countries to replace American and British forces. What we need – and we need it right now – is a strategy and a timetable for withdrawal not more years of Blair's blood price...

Let's talk about Scotland's oil. We have released secret papers from the 1970s demonstrating the level of deceit from Tory and Labour administrations about the true nature of Scotland's oil wealth. Gavin McCrone was the Scottish Office economic adviser. He wrote a paper on North Sea oil and the difference it could make to Scottish economy. No wonder they kept in secret.

Labour say they did not lie. Really! Let's make a few comparisons between what McCrone said to Labour and what Labour told Scotland. McCrone said that an independent Scotland would have title to 99 per cent of the oil revenues and that the only thing wrong with SNP estimates is that they were too low.

Labour told Scots our figures were wildly exaggerated. McCrone compared Scotland's economic prospects to Switzerland. Labour to Bangladesh. McCrone said that oil had overturned the economic arguments against Scottish nationalism. Labour said Scotland couldn't manage. McCrone praised how Norway had dealt with the international companies and said that Britain had failed.

Labour said that Scotland would be too small to deal with big oil. McCrone said that Scotland would be a welcome and influential member of the European Community. Labour said that we would be out in the cold.

Every bottom of every political barrel was scraped to keep London's grip on Scotland's oil. And they are still at it today. This week Gordon Brown said that the price of oil was volatile - that you cannot rely on a single resource. The sub text is that it's not really worth all that much. That is the myth. What is the reality?

This Chancellor is getting £1 billion a month from Scotland's wealth. Right now, it is the black black oil, which is filling Brown's black hole. Gordon says that we cannot depend on one natural asset. Strange that his former adviser Ed Balls MP says that bulging North Sea revenues are "the main good news on the economic front ," and remember when Balls speaks its Brown speaks its Balls.

After 25 years of wasted opportunity, we don't need lectures from any London Chancellor on how to handle our natural resources. We only have to look across the North Sea to see how to husband a capital asset. The Norwegian fund for future generations has now topped £100 billion and the interest and earnings from it are as great as this year's Norwegian oil revenues. Norway celebrating 100 years of independence is also celebrating 25 years of oil.

People ask, how long will oil last? For Scotland, the answer is between 30 and 50 years.For Norway, the answer is for all time. Why? Because the economic impact of their fund will last for all time.

In contrast, thus far Scotland's oil has disappeared down the gullet of the London Treasury. Therefore, what is the importance of these 30-year revelations for today and tomorrow? Firstly for the present. If Tory and Labour politicians were prepared to lie and cheat Scotland in the 1970s why should anyone believe a word they have to say about Scotland in 2005 or in 2007? Then for the future.

There is as much oil and gas in the waters around Scotland as has been exploited thus far. - Another 30 plus billion barrels of oil, another £200 billion of revenues. We have a second chance to transform our economic prospects and we must seize it with both hands. Of course, I can understand London politicians who deprecate the ability of Scots to fully govern themselves.

It is a tactic employed by Westminster towards many countries for generations, for centuries. However, how do we excuse the politicians from Scotland to whom it seems second nature to run down the ability and potential of their own country? The truth is out there because we have published it. Now we must never let them forget it – not now, not ever.

It is still Scotland's oil.

As McCrone predicted and as Stewart Hosie has demonstrated this week the extent of oil and gas revenues would propel the Scottish economy into chronic surplus. We are launching an economic offensive. Our opponents are discredited - their past has caught up with them. The present demonstrates a strong financial platform for independence.

But what really matters is the future. What matters is moving the Scottish economy onto a strong growth plane. The failure to grow the economy over these last 25 wasted British years. It is why we are loosing population. It is why we have not just blighted streets but blighted lives in Scotland.

Off our East coast is independent Norway with oil growing at 3 per cent a year. Off our West coast is independent Ireland growing at 5 per cent a year. If we had grown at the rate of independent Norway over the last 20 years we would be £5,000 a head richer. If we had matched the growth rate of independent Ireland we would be £20,000 a head richer.

What we need is the economic strategy to unlock that potential, to be among the most competitive countries in the world, to match the growth of the other small independent European nations. If we were to do that, it would mean an independence bonus of an additional 19 billion in the economy by 2015, or £4,000 per Scot.

When Nicola and I stood for election a year ago, we put forward a proposal to reduce business rates to below the levels of England. I know it was influential. How do we know?

Well one of Mr McConnell's henchmen left his comments on our manifesto on a Scottish Parliament photocopier. "Should we pre-empt this?" the note said. Of course when he finally got round to doing something Mr McConnell's main concern was to brief that this initiative was nothing whatsoever to do with his Liberal Deputy who was told nothing about it. Now Mr Stephen says it was all down to him.

That's their story and who needs Ballymory when we have McConnell and Stephen - the Scottish Executive? Actually it was nothing to do with either of them. Lacking ideas of their own the were just pinching SNP policy.

Listen guys you don't have to talk to each other. I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to talk you either. Just keep reading Nicola's lips to get your ideas.

In the General Election we published a plan to Let Scotland Flourish -how to give our economy a competitive edge in the modern world. It has seven key policies to lift the Scottish growth rate. We intend to develop that further over the next year and make it a centre piece of the campaign for 2007.

One of our proposals is to give Scotland an edge not just in business rates but in corporate tax - to reverse the long process of loosing headquarters and decision making centres from Scotland.More than 20 years ago, I was a young economist working for the Royal Bank of Scotland. There were takeover bids for the Bank from Standard Charter and Hong Kong Shanghai. They were kicked into touch by the Monopolies Commission as being against the Scottish public interest.

Last week I attended the opening of the new world headquarters of the Royal Bank now the 5th largest Bank on face of the planet. It will provide opportunities in Scotland for thousands of young people to pursue careers to the very top of their chosen profession, and yet if it had not been for that decision of 20 year ago, there would have been nothing to celebrate. Gogerburn would be but an empty field.

In the next few weeks, bids will emerge for Scottish Power our largest industrial company headquartered in Scotland. If it disappears into the maw of a company, which already owns Power Gen south of the border, then its headquarters functions will also disappear.

No one argues that it is possible in the modern world to protect every business from takeover. However, no normal country allows its key strategic companies to disappear without considering the public and competition interest. The Germans do not allow it and neither do the French. For Scotland, this is our biggest industrial company. Energy is our strategic resource.

The Scottish Executive sit on their hands - helpless, hopeless and hapless - with as much control over things that really matter to Scotland as King Canute had over the tide. Scotland has now just a handful of world reach companies headquartered in Scotland.

We pledge at this conference to fight them until we have the economic edge of independence which will bring many more to join them.

In the general election, we gained our first seats from the Labour Party at a Westminster election since 1974. This year we have started to win by elections at local level across Scotland. Our aim for 2007 is to win seats across Scotland from Labour, the Liberals and the Tories. Some people say it can't be done. I say yes it can.

We have to gain 20 seats first passed the post and then others from the list. What we do will be determined by our own efforts. Mind you we will be greatly helped by our political opponents. Labour once had the longest suicide note in political history. Michael Howard is engaged in the longest resignation note in political history.

Charles Kennedy wants to turn his party into a Tory Party although the delegates - in best tradition of the Liberals - are not sure. I have the solution for both parties. It is not too late for another entry into the Tory leadership contest. Kennedy is the remedy for the Tories.

And we don't even need a crystal ball to say what a Liberal / Tory coalition look like. Just ask the thousands of Council workers in Aberdeen who were sent letters telling them that their wages were to be cut by a Liberal/Tory Council.

Delegates to win in 2007 we have to have confidence in three things - ourselves, our programme and our country. Firstly, in ourselves. This year we have rediscovered the will to win. Stewart Hosie in Dundee, Angus Brendan in the Western Isles, local government seats the length and breadth of the country. Remember there are more people in Scotland who would vote for this Party than any other. All we have to do is to demonstrate that we are worthy of that support.

Secondly, confidence in our programme. We are a social democratic party. That means we match and marry economic efficiency with a social programme, which shapes the public purpose. Our economy can be the new Celtic tiger not the Caledonian pussycat. Our public services can be made to work efficiently and our ideas to do that are flowing through this Conference agenda.

Our belief in social and international justice can find expression through our political institutions. We judge the temper of our people correctly - Scotland wants a party which uses both the head and the heart.

Thirdly and most importantly importantly confidence in our country. Unionism depends on the notion that somehow our nation of Scotland is incapable of making the big decisions. - war and peace, taxation, international aid - issues like Iraq, tax credits, the betrayals since the G8.

What exactly is it about Westminster's handling of these issues that we are meant to admire? The truth is that Scotland is good enough, big enough, and talented enough to be independent.

We are not going to allow our potential as a people to be measured by the mediocrity of the Scottish Executive. We are not going to allow our nation to be traduced and misrepresented by the mendacity of Westminster. And we are not going to allow our country to be a dumping ground for nuclear waste of the next generation of nuclear missiles.

Our political strategy is clear - clear as crystal. We intend to win the elections of 2007. We intend to demonstrate to Scotland that we have the competence and credibility to run Scotland and run it well. We intend to offer the people of this country - within the first term of office - the opportunity to move forward to independence.

We need the freedom for our country to match the generous heart of our people - the generous heart we saw after the Tsunami. We need the power to capture the opportunities of renewable energy power and the hydrogen economy. We need the ambition not just to march to make poverty history but to have a Government, which lives that dream.

In the summer I paraded with the Sir William Wallace Free Colliers to the Wallacetown monument -they have marched every year since 1861. Back then when the miners were looking for a hero to symbolise their struggle for freedom from the serfdom of the coal owners they chose Wallace and they chose wisely. 700 years ago Scotland's greatest hero gave his life for that freedom.

We are not required to make that sacrifice - only invest our votes, our hopes and our time. But we are not an ordinary political party nor is our mission the ordinary stuff of politics. Our immediate aim is to rescue the politics of this country from the mediocrity of an Executive with - as someone said recently - the attention span of a goldfish.

But our objective is to break the grip of the London parties over Scotland - not just the political grip but their unionist mindset of defeatism , can't do and second best. Forget the old excuses about lack of confidence. We aspire to lead into a new age of responsibility for Scotland.Scotland needs Independence, self determination and self respect. And right now Scotland needs the SNP.

The Telegraph (UK), 23 September 2005, has a report on terrorism in Iraq:

Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, Moqtada al-Sadr's top official in the sprawling Sadr City slums of Baghdad, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain was plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out mass-casualty bombings targeting Shia civilians and then blaming the attacks on Sunni Arab groups.

"Everyone knows the occupiers' agenda," insisted Mr Daraji, who is currently the only Mahdi army official authorised to speak directly on Sadr's behalf.

"They are in bed with Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service] and their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq." But Mr Daraji insisted that Sadr was not going to call for a Shia uprising in Basra, where he enjoys only a limited, if growing, following in the city's slums.

"We have to take the moral high ground and resist this provocation by the British," he said.

"This is a very dangerous, very sensitive time in Iraq but we must calm our supporters or we will fall into the British trap."

According to The Telegraph, Sadr has been keen to cultivate a degree of legitimacy since he agreed to join the political process last year.

"It has also been widely reported that Brigadier Gordon Kerr is now stationed with British forces in Iraq. Brigadier Kerr played a key role in the activities of covert British activities in the North as the commanding officer of the Force Research Unit/Joint Services Group."

Sinister covert operations by British forces in Iraq are “reminscent of the activities of the SAS" in the North, a leading human rights campaigner said last night.

Paul O'Connor, of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre (PFC), demanded that the British government “break the cycle of abuse" imposed by its forces.

He also questioned the “sheepish" decision by large sections of the media to “report the MOD line as established fact".

Mr O'Connor was speaking to Daily Ireland after further details emerged about an incident in Basra on Monday afternoon involving undercover British operatives.

The incident drew parallels with the March 1988 attack on the funeral of IRA volunteer Caoimhghin Mac Bradaigh.

During that incident, two armed and undercover army intelligence operatives drove directly at the cortege in west Belfast...

Many commentators have noted the similarity between the activities of British forces in Iraq in recent years with British actions in Ireland over the past three decades.Speaking last September after the British government's controversial decision not to establish a public inquiry into the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, former secretary of state Paul Murphy alluded to the similar activities.

During a BBC interview, Mr Murphy commented: “Many of the operational techniques that would be discussed in the inquiry would be used currently in the war against terror."

Mr Murphy subsequently left the Northern Ireland Office in May and became chairperson of the British government's intelligence and security committee.

It has also been widely reported that Brigadier Gordon Kerr is now stationed with British forces in Iraq.

Brigadier Kerr played a key role in the activities of covert British activities in the North as the commanding officer of the Force Research Unit/Joint Services Group.

Referring to the recent actions of British forces, Paul O'Connor said: “It is not at all suprising and is in fact for many people reminscent of the activities of the SAS here when they engaged in shoot-to-kill missions.”

“Distressing as it is to see the human rights violations repeated in Iraq, it is equally distressing to see the media follow sheepishly behind the MOD line, so you have broadcasters like the BBC reporting a number of highly contested aspects of this affair as established fact," Mr O'Connor said.

“We have the situation where all British soldiers in Iraq are keenly aware that in their ranks were convicted murderers – Fisher and Wright – one of whom had since been promoted," Mr O'Connor added.

A fortnight ago, the PFC organised a meeting in London addressed by lawyer Phil Shiner who is representing more than 50 families of Iraqi citizens killed by British forces. Mr Shiner outlined systematic abuse – up to and including murder – practised by British soldiers in Iraq, specifically mentioning the ordering of prisoners to cut off the fingers of other prisoners.